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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24344389">Romantics</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/benevolentmonolithicc/pseuds/benevolentmonolithicc'>benevolentmonolithicc</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Archivist Jonathan Sims, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, M/M, POV Alternating, Season 1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:54:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,354</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24344389</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/benevolentmonolithicc/pseuds/benevolentmonolithicc</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin was a romantic; anyone could tell. It was in his words and daydreams and his poetry - because Christ, he even had poetry. It was everywhere in him, up and down, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes, Martin was a romantic. He'd been one all his life, so he’d expected something like this to happen...Jon was a romantic too, sort of. Love was different for Jon, it's not like in the songs and the poems and the TV shows that he didn't watch. And Jon would describe himself as many things and none of them would be romantic. But that didn't change the facts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Georgie Barker &amp; Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood &amp; Sasha James &amp; Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>160</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Romantics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Martin was a romantic; anyone could tell. It was in his words and daydreams and his poetry - because Christ, he even had poetry. It was everywhere in him, up and down, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes, Martin was a romantic. He'd been one all his life, so he’d expected something like this to happen. It'd happened before, at every job and school, no matter how short his stay there was it happened. And there’s a reason they call it a crush, and Martin knew it first hand. <span class="hardreadability"> It's not butterflies and feeling like soaring, not at first; when Martin got a crush it was like </span> <span class="passivevoice"> being hit by </span> <span class="hardreadability"> a semi truck, and it had never done him any good</span>.</p><p>There was that time he'd worked at the Gregg's where he couldn't stop staring at the shelver's hands. <span class="hardreadability"> It was the way they moved, the way they brushed his hair out of his face, the way they tapped on the counter when they were waiting for a shopper on slow days</span>. It had almost been a relief when Martin had gotten fired. And there were so many others, the boy in front of him in Maths, the boy who let Martin sit next to him on the bus, and now this. And of course it had to be him. Because Martin could never get a crush on someone who'd ever like him back. No, he had to have a crush on his boss, in a job he'd lied on his CV to get to, and Martin hated every minute of it.</p><p>It wasn't fair. Bosses shouldn't look like that, they <span class="qualifier"> just </span> shouldn't. They shouldn't have messy salt and pepper hair for Martin to dream about playing with. They shouldn't have cheekbones Martin could cut his fingers on caressing. <span class="hardreadability"> And they </span> <span class="adverb"> certainly </span> <span class="hardreadability"> shouldn't have eyes like...like people write long, eloquent poems about that Martin could never seem to match</span>. And of course he hated Martin. Martin wasn't very good at his job. He tried to be, but he wasn't. <span class="veryhardreadability"> So he tried to make up for it in tea, and kindness, and sweaters that Tim and Sasha stole that always seemed to end up on Jon, and working even harder than his own skill would allow</span>. And Martin knew, because he was smart no matter what Jon might think, that it wouldn't go anywhere. But he wouldn't let that stop him. He never did.</p><p></p><div class="">
  <p>Martin shouldn't have been a romantic. His mother had been one once, not that you could tell by the state of her now. <span class="hardreadability"> She raised Martin with sharp words and sharp eyes and sharp warnings through sharp lips about where love got you</span>. And Martin ignored her. He fell in love again and again, and it got for him about as much as it had gotten his mother, but that never stopped him. He didn't let it. Instead he wrote poems. Flowery, lovey poems, dark and weepy poems, poems about everything <span class="complexword"> in between</span>. And they were dreadful, but Martin didn't stop. He kept falling and writing and caring and loving because he was above all things a romantic. A doe-eyed bleeding heart who wrote bad poetry and worse reports and he never regretted it. Especially when he looked at Jon.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Jon was a romantic too, sort of. Love was different for Jon, it's not like in the songs and the poems and the TV shows that he didn't watch. And Jon would describe himself as many things and none of them would be romantic. But that didn't change the facts. <span class="veryhardreadability"> It wasn't love at first sight or instant attraction for him, it was basking in the warmth of someone's smile and realising, with a start, that you're looking at their lips</span>. It's dismissing poetry and finding all you can read is books about love that you can't bring yourself to scoff at. And Jon didn’t fall in love often, and he realised it even less, so it was not something that he'd expected.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And it had to be him. Of course it had to be him. Because it wouldn't be a proper joke if it wasn't him. The one Jon had been cruel to, dismissive of, ignorant of in every way. Because nothing could ever be easy. And love was not for Martin was it was for Jon. Martin <span class="passivevoice"> was swept </span> up, hit by it, crushed with it. But Jon <span class="qualifier"> just </span> noticed things. Tea that he found himself drinking even though he found it abhorrent. <span class="hardreadability"> Looks he found himself taking, staring at Martin from across the Archives while not meaning to</span>. <span class="hardreadability"> His heart skipping a beat whenever he met Martin's eyes, the kinds of eyes that they write poetry about, poetry that Jon wouldn't read</span>. <span class="veryhardreadability"> And even worse noticing the way that Martin’s cheeks moved when he smiled, or the way that all his atrocious reports </span> <span class="passivevoice"> were written </span> <span class="veryhardreadability"> in a shaky, smudged hand he felt a fierce, terrifying desire to hold</span>.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>But Jon didn't <span class="adverb"> really </span> know what was happening. <span class="hardreadability"> He had other things to worry about, other issues in his life than feelings he wasn't sure about, not that he was ever sure of any of his feelings</span>. <span class="veryhardreadability"> So he drank the tea while hating it, and he took the glances without thinking about why, and wouldn't meet Martin in the eye, and he hoped it would all go away all while hoping it would never end because Jon liked love</span>. He did. The idea of it, the motions of it, the feeling of it. <span class="hardreadability"> Closing your eyes at night and imagining kissing someone, feeling like your hand is empty because some else's fingers </span> <span class="passivevoice"> are laced around</span><span class="hardreadability"> it</span>. And so when he was in love, because Jon never had a crush that he recognized as such, he was happy. Happy in a different way, in a feeling like the protagonist of a Rom-Com sort of way. He didn't feel it often, but when he did it was nice. Jon didn’t have a lot of nice feelings.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Love had been as kind to Jon as it had been to Martin. There had been Georgie of course, but they were more of friends than anything else, they both agreed. But there had been others, and they never seemed to understand him. Was he gay? Was he straight? Was he bi, and if he was why didn’t he want to have sex? Did he <span class="adverb"> really </span> love them? Why was he even in a relationship at all? That’s how things always ended. Confusion. Anger sometimes, though Jon never could pick up on it. It tended to be easier to not have anything to do with love. And Jon tried not to. <span class="veryhardreadability"> But here he was, wondering if Martin’s lips would taste like tea, trying not to think about how warm and soft Martin would be to touch and never succeeding because Jon was, damn it all, a romantic of all things</span>. A misanthrope, a workaholic, a terrible chef and an okay singer, and a romantic. And sometimes when he looked at Martin he was okay with that.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It’s hard to say when they realised that the other was a romantic too. <span class="veryhardreadability">It might have been Jon, scared, scarred, and </span><span class="adverb">newly</span><span class="veryhardreadability"> clean of worms flipping through a book of bad poems that he couldn’t bring himself to put down, when he’d never afforded any other poems the same courtesy</span>. <span class="hardreadability">Reading words that he should have scoffed at, did scoff at, and feeling them resonate within him when lay in the bed of his cold and empty flat</span>. <span class="hardreadability">It might have been Martin, looking up to see Jon looking at him and meeting Martin's eyes, and then looking away, blushing and fixing his hair</span>. Seeing a look in Jon’s eyes that he recognized from the mirror and a blush on his cheeks like he saw in his dreams. It might not have been in a moment, an interaction, but a feeling that <span class="qualifier">maybe</span>, <span class="qualifier">just</span> <span class="qualifier">maybe</span>, they weren’t alone. That they might be a romantic, but the other was too. And that for once, being a romantic wasn’t a bad thing.</p>
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